Last fall, I shared a (rather lengthy) blog post outlining an unscientific, but, I daresay, instructive formula—IGC—that we’ve used over the years to contemplate and assess the variables of a SaaS company’s success, including our own.

We just closed the books on a heck of a year! Rather than writing a bland momentum blog post, we wanted to use this IGC framework to contextualize our path to success.

Today, FullStory is not only growing, we’re accelerating every quarter. With our Series D in the rearview, global expansion going full-steam, and a wonderful board of directors, I’m humbled to have been a part of the team that has achieved our current standing.

Here’s how the IGC framework has spelled DXI success for FullStory.

I - Idea that leads to Innovation

FullStory’s history of innovation is in part a product of “trying the wrong things first.” Joining forces with Bruce Johnson and Joel Webber, I co-founded a startup that developed an “agile marketing” platform called Homebase.

But as one potential funder said, “It’s cool—but what’s the invention?” Really, there wasn’t one. It was admittedly a glorified spreadsheet.

We evaluated traditional web and product analytics solutions and found they came up short, leaving product and digital teams with too many unanswered questions. These old, tag-based analytics tools only give you a tiny slice of the story.

So we pivoted to what became FullStory: an innovative look at the what and the why of web experience that other tools couldn’t answer.

We designed FullStory’s Digital Experience Intelligence (DXI) platform to be different. It allows you to leverage the strengths of both autocapture and instrumentation paradigms. We believe that this approach is the way forward for digital experience and product analytics.

And the innovating is never done. We’ve delivered value to our customers through new and improved capabilities this year, including enhancements to Signals and Funnels that uncover blindspots and surface revenue-increasing opportunities. We continue to evolve our mobile offering to optimize the in-app journey without compromising performance.

FullStory also raised the bar on DXI with new machine learning capabilities that transform comprehensive digital experience data into insightful journey maps. This uncovers previously unknown opportunities to perfect user experience while reducing signal noise.

G - Go-to-market plan

The go-to-market (GTM) approach came immediately after our initial innovation. We needed to validate the product-market fit, so we set a modest price point that enabled customers to buy and use the software self-service.

This decision paid off. We acquired customers who loved the product and took it to other companies when they changed jobs, establishing a flywheel of growth from which we still benefit.

Cut to today, and our GTM approach has evolved to win customers that span everything from startups using our free, base-level plan to enterprise companies making seven-figure investments in perfecting their digital products and experiences.

Now, more than 3,200 companies—including 10 of the top 20 private cloud companies in the world (Forbes Cloud 100) and 10 of the 40 top online retailers (DigitalCommerce360 Top 500)—use FullStory’s DXI platform.

Establishing a strong GTM plan has also allowed us to grow a presence in international markets with intentional, focused speed. We’ve ticked more than 100% revenue gains across both EMEA and APAC in 2021, supported by key wins at Kogan, Mammut, MYOB, Zip, Endeavour Group, and Flight Centre.

C - Culture

Our founding team knew culture was a crucial part of the conversation—which is why our watchwords continue to be used daily by employees across the company.

These North Stars—empathy, clarity, and bionics—have helped us maintain a Fullstorian mindset and community, even as we’ve more than doubled our employee base in 2021, with triple-digit growth in every region.

We now have more than 500 employees (a stat that undoubtedly will already be outdated by the time this publishes), with teams around the globe, including Atlanta, San Francisco, London, Sydney, and Singapore.

And we’ve been rounding out our leadership bench, too. Alongside adding former Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen and Sprout Social President Ryan Baretto to our Board of Directors, we appointed Edelita Tichepco as CFO, Google veteran Jim Miller as VP of Recruitment, and Will Schnabel as SVP of Alliances & Partnerships.

Undoubtedly, without those first three letters—IGC—DXI wouldn’t be where it is today. Continuing to keep our eyes on this framework has led us to realizing record revenue growth and, more importantly, serving more than 3,200 customers globally as they make digital experiences better for billions of people around the globe.

Though we’ve seen tremendous success, the truth is—we’re just getting started. I’m energized about the path ahead as we earn the trust of new customers and help them push digital experiences to new heights.